THE AMERICAN INDLiN.
• A graphic account of the changes which contact with white civilization has wrought for the American Indian is contained in the latest report of the Board of Indian Commissioners. Tepees and wigwams have made way for shacks, and in some instances mansions, and the Board notes that doeskin leggings have been discarded for creased trousers and buckskin mocassins for rubber-heeled shoes. The tomtom has become an instrument for jazz. Tribal hunting grounds have been cut up into wire-fenced plots, and so on. And, comments Zit Kalasa, a Sioux Chief and President of the National Council of American Indians, this Indian race, once Self-supporting and self-respecting, is slowly but surely being pauperized. While a few Indians have become wealthy in the receipt of oil royalties, many tribes are undoubtedly in abject poverty, and appeals are being made to the Federal and State Author- ities to save them from the starvation threatened this winter. Segregation in reservations has proved a handicap rather than a help to the Indians. Unable to maintain themselves by their primitive methods of cultivation and craftsmanship, they are also deprived in their isolation of the means and the incentive to fit themselves for employment in the white man's scheme of things. The remedies, as governmental authorities see them, are vocational training, employment outside the reservations, and the gradual absorption of the Indian into the general stream of American life.
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